Apex Trader Funding is a futures prop firm, and its accounts route through Tradovate, Rithmic, and NinjaTrader. Many funded traders run more than one Apex account at once, which raises the practical question this article answers: what does Apex allow when you copy one account's trades to the others, and how do you set that up without breaking a rule.
Apex permits copy trading, with conditions. You copy across your own accounts, up to a fixed number, and every account has to stay on the same side of a trade. A trade copier handles the replication, but the copier does not know Apex's rulebook. The rules below are yours to read and configure. Every Apex figure here should be confirmed on apextraderfunding.com as of 2026, since prop firms revise their terms.
Quick Answer
Apex permits copy trading across your own funded and evaluation accounts, up to 20 at once: one leader and up to 19 followers, all owned by you, all on the same side of a trade. Trada copies one leader's futures order to your other Apex accounts in real time over their NinjaTrader or Rithmic route. It does not connect to Tradovate, so an Apex account whose only route is Tradovate needs a Tradovate-specific copier. Verify Apex's current rules on apextraderfunding.com as of 2026.
How Apex Copy Trading Works
A copy setup has one leader account, the account your strategy runs on, and one or more follower accounts that mirror it. When the leader fills an order, the same order propagates to each connected follower. Apex refers to the leader as the master account; the mechanics are the same as any futures copy setup covered in the futures copy trading guide.
Apex allows this across accounts you own, which is the common case for a funded trader holding several evaluation and performance accounts. What it does not allow is copying from an account that belongs to someone else. The trades have to originate from your own account. That single condition rules out running a signal service or mirroring another trader into your Apex stack.
Because Apex is futures-only, every account in the copy chain is a futures account, and the copy is like-for-like: Futures copies to Futures. There is no translation into another instrument class. That keeps the mapping predictable, and it means the platform each account routes through, not the instrument, is the variable to plan around.
Apex's Copy Trading Rules
Four rules govern copy trading on Apex as of 2026. Read them against the firm's current terms before you build a setup, because the numbers and conditions change.
The same-direction rule is the one that intersects most directly with how a copier behaves. A copier replicates the leader's direction to every follower by design, so a correctly configured copy setup keeps the stack aligned automatically. The rule you have to watch is manual intervention: if you close or reverse a follower by hand while the leader is still in the trade, you can put two of your accounts on opposite sides. Confirm the current wording of each rule on Apex's site, as the firm updates its policy periodically.
How Trada Connects to an Apex Account
Apex offers accounts on more than one platform, so a single Apex account often has a Rithmic or NinjaTrader route available alongside Tradovate. That matters because Trada is a cloud-based trade copier whose futures connectivity is NinjaTrader, Rithmic, and DXFeed. There is no VPS and no bridge software in the path; Trada connects directly to each broker's API, so a copier runs whether or not your desktop is online.
Where an Apex account exposes a NinjaTrader or Rithmic route, Trada connects to it as a leader or a follower. You connect the leader once and add each Apex account as a follower using its platform credentials; some routes require you to enable API access before the credentials work. Leader and follower do not have to be on the same route, since both NinjaTrader and Rithmic are supported and the copy stays Futures to Futures. The account-by-account walkthrough lives in the guide on copying trades across prop firm accounts.
The honest limit is Tradovate. Trada does not connect to Tradovate, so if you select the Tradovate route when you activate an Apex account, Trada cannot copy to it. Check each Apex account's available platforms in your firm dashboard, and choose the NinjaTrader or Rithmic route if you intend to copy it with Trada. For any account locked to Tradovate, a Tradovate-specific copier is the right tool.
Sizing Contracts Across Your Apex Accounts
Apex accounts come in different sizes, so the leader's contract count is rarely the right count for every follower. Trada offers three sizing modes.
Futures carry one constraint forex does not: contracts are whole units, not fractional lots. A multiplier or percent-of-balance mode resolves to a whole number of contracts, so a smaller account can round to a different effective ratio than a larger one, and a very small account can round down. Verify the resolved contract count on each follower before you go live rather than assuming the ratio holds exactly. This matters on Apex specifically because a single trailing-threshold breach can end an account, and an unexpected rounding-up on one follower puts more contracts at risk there than you planned.
Enforcing Risk Below Apex's Threshold
Each follower account carries its own risk thresholds, independent of the others. Trada enforces two per account: a daily loss threshold and a Max Account Loss threshold. When a threshold is breached, the action you chose for that account fires automatically. You pick one of three: notify, stop the copier, or flatten the account.
The action you pick decides what actually happens at the limit. A notification alone fires while the position is still open, which can be too late for a trailing threshold that ends the account the moment it is touched. Stopping the copier halts further copying to that follower; flattening closes its open positions. For an Apex trailing-threshold figure, set the Trada threshold below Apex's published number so that spread and slippage do not push you through the hard limit before the action fires. The risk management guide covers how to choose the buffer per account.
This enforcement is literal, and that is the honest limit. Trada acts on the numbers you enter; it does not read Apex's live rulebook or track when the firm changes a figure. The values you configure are the values it enforces, which is why confirming Apex's current trailing threshold yourself is part of the setup, not an afterthought. The prop firm compliance guide breaks down where traders get these numbers wrong.
Trada enforces the thresholds you configure; it does not know Apex's rulebook, so confirm your current daily loss and Max Account Loss figures on apextraderfunding.com yourself and set your thresholds below them. Trada also does not connect to Tradovate — if an Apex account's only route is Tradovate, use a Tradovate-specific copier for that account.
Journaling and Reporting Across Apex Accounts
Copying one trade to several Apex accounts multiplies the record-keeping. Trada's journal captures fills automatically from the connected accounts, so entry and exit data is read-only and you never retype it. You annotate each trade after the fact and filter the record by strategy, session, symbol, or account, which lets you separate how one strategy performed across a stack of Apex accounts from how a single account performed across strategies.
Reports consolidate the connected accounts into one performance record plus a health score, so a set of Apex accounts reads as a single operation rather than a row of separate terminals. The limit here is the same as for any journal: it records what you tag and captures what the accounts report. It does not interpret the record for you — the reading of it is yours. The reports feature covers what the consolidated view includes. For how Apex compares to other futures firms on copier support, see the best trade copier for prop firms breakdown.
Frequently Asked Questions
Trading involves significant risk of loss. Past performance is not indicative of future results. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Prop firm rules and platform availability change — verify Apex Trader Funding's current terms, account limits, and supported platforms on apextraderfunding.com (as of 2026). Always conduct your own due diligence before using any trading tool or service.
Sources
- 1.Apex Trader Funding: Copy trading policy, account rules, and platform options, apextraderfunding.com (accessed 2026)
- 2.Apex Trader Funding: Supported platforms and trailing-threshold documentation, apextraderfunding.com (accessed 2026)
- 3.Rithmic: Order routing and market data documentation, rithmic.com (accessed 2026)
- 4.NinjaTrader: Platform connectivity and API documentation, ninjatrader.com (accessed 2026)